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Knowing the Shaikh The practice of tomb shrine pilgrimage, known as ziyarat, is under attack on several fronts. Muslim reformers object to the practice as polytheistic and reminiscent of Hinduism.192 Sikh reformers, on the other hand, object to the practice as derivative from Islam and suggestive of spiritual authority outside that of the Guru Granth (the holy text) and the Guru Panth (the body of believers).193 And Hindu reformers have actively targeted dargahs in other regions because they are both Muslim sites and sites of inter-religious encounter.194 Thus the accounts of Haider Shaikh, his tomb, and the community of the saint who attend his shrine and transmit his lore are important expressions of the struggle to maintain the relevance, significance, and existence of the site. Establishing the veracity of the events described by the various interlocutors of the saint is secondary to understanding the meaning of Haider Shaikh to his devotees and the residents of the settlement he founded. Among residents and visitors to Malerkotla the level of knowledge about the saint ranges widely from those who know multiple stories, recount his miracles, perform his rituals, and attend his shrine to those who do none of these things. In Malerkotla, nearly every resident whom I interviewed knew most of the basic outline of the history and hagiography of Haider Shaikh given above. However, the devotees from outside the town who attend the festivals for the saint knew few of these stories. The particular types of stories known, the number known and the variety of stories told are all indicators of the orientation of the teller towards the saint and the aspects of Haider Shaikh's tradition deemed relevant to community and 192 The controversial nature of ziyārat will be discussed further in Chapters Four and Six. 193 The tenth Sikh Guru, Gobind Singh, according to majoritarian Sikh tradition declared that after his death the living guruship would end and the Guru (meaning God) would be enshrined in the Guru Granth and the Guru Panth. 194 As discussed in the introduction, most recently in the violence in Gujarat in spring 2002, investigative panels list at least 240 dargāhs destroyed by Hindu mobs. See, for example, Dateline Gujarat: Inside Hindutva's Laboratory, Communalism Combat, 2002 [cited. Available from http://www.sabrang.com/cc/archive/2002/marapril/dateline.htm. 138 personal life. Thus for some locals, the Shaikh is more important as the town’s founder than as a holy man. The prestige of the marital link to the Sultan Bahlol Lodhi and the ancient heritage of the kingdom are points of pride for the Muslim community especially. Residents who do attend the shrine tend to possess a body of additional lore concerning the shrine’s past and present role in community life, the site's miraculous construction, and numerous personal accounts of healing or fulfilled desires. Devotees from outside Malerkotla often do not know historic accounts of the Shaikh. Indeed many do not know his full name, Shaikh Sadruddin Sadri Jahan.195 Whether or not they know any of the lore of the saint and the town, devotees from outside tend to be more concerned with communicating the living presence and power of the saint rather than extolling his past deeds. Given the multiple possible orientations towards the saint, it is not surprising that different features and variant narratives come to the fore with different tellers and in various contexts. These nuances, emphases, deviations, and contradictions, reveal how the stories become key identity markers for the interlocutors, shaping the personal and public meaning of the Shaikh. The community of the saint is comprised of his descendents, the ritual specialists who mediate his spirit and power, and his devotees. This variegated community organizes their accounts of Haider Shaikh in order to construct his symbolic meaning according to their needs and interests. One way in which narrators do this is through committing what some would call an historical "error," displacing Haider Shaikh in time in order to generate a hereditary or sentimental link. This is consistent with the oral narratives collected by Alessandro Portelli in relation to the misplacement of a symbolic event in community memories in order to link the 195 Shaikh Sadruddin Sadr-i Jahan is written above the entrance to the tomb, but it is written in Urdu script, making it difficult for the mostly Punjabi and Hindi speaking clientele to read. 139 event with the ideological concerns of the present.196 Similarly, temporal displacement of the saint is a common technique in Malerkotla employed to connect him in some way to the narrator's own history. Thus many local Hindus place Haider Shaikh as a contemporary of Baba Atma Ram, the Hindu saint whose shrine lies about a kilometer from Haider Shaikh's tomb. Although by most estimates Baba Atma Ram was active in the early eighteenth century, in these oral accounts there is a deep friendship between the two. This temporal shift reduces the dominant shadow cast by Haider Shaikh over the town, placing the Hindu saint as a contemporary and equal with his own repertoire of miracle stories and entourage of devotees. The shift also opens up space for Hindus in the devotional cult of Haider Shaikh as a holy man who was non-sectarian in his own lifetime as evidenced by his friendship with Baba Atma Ram and sets a precedent for his devotees to likewise supercede religious boundaries in the present. Haider Shaikh's acceptability as a companion to a Hindu saint provides a resource for Hindus today who wish to engage in inter-religious dialogue. This is important because many Hindus are under increasing pressure from groups like the VHP and RSS to focus their attention on their own community. Hindutva activists employ various tactics to foster heightened religious consciousness. In some cases, VHP, Bajrang Dal, RSS and other activists have sought to wrest control of a shrine and its identity from its Muslim proprietors.197 For example, there are frequent calls to boycott Muslim businesses and products, an action that would make life extremely difficult in Muslim majority Malerkotla.198 Participation in Sufi cults in the view of 196 Portelli, The Death of Luigi Trastulli and Other Stories. 197 This is most recently exemplified by VHP leader Praveen Togadia's tour of India in which he visited numerous shrines, holding rallies at which he declared that the place would be the "next Ayodhya." Although the focus of these groups is strongest upon three major sites – the Ram birthplace at Ayodhya, the Krishna birthplace at Mathura, and a mosque in Banaras – the thousands of other sites identified as formerly Hindu are often more available and locally vulnerable. One shrine that is most actively contested in this fashion is the jointly identified Dargāh Baba Budhan Shah – Sri Swami Dattatreya Peetha in Chikmaglur, Karnataka. For more on this place see, Yoginder Sikand, Sacred Spaces: Exploring Traditions of Shared Faith in India, (New Delhi; Penguin India, 2003). 198 I have not seen or heard of any such pamphlets or efforts being promoted in post-Partition Malerkotla. 140 Hindu extremist organizations is a mixed proposition. On the one hand it demonstrates the openness and tolerance of Hinduism. On the other hand, it acknowledges Islam as a valid religion with indigenous traditions and brings revenue to the caretakers of the tomb – often Muslims. Thus the support of Sufi shrines is often viewed as akin to the type of appeasement that the Muslims already enjoy as a minority group in terms of reservations for jobs and places in universities, etc. and financial assistance to underdeveloped communities.199 Thus Hindus who continue to participate in the cults of Sufi saints do so in the knowledge that their behavior would be objectionable to right-wing Hindu organizations. As such their presence may in many cases be a type of resistance to divisive Hindu politics. For these Hindus, displacing Haider Shaikh in time and condensing his cult with that of Baba Atma Ram strategically resignifies Haider Shaikh's symbolic meaning: he remains a key symbol of inter-religious harmony, but on terms which generate a powerful precedent for non-Muslims. For the Muslims most closely connected to Haider Shaikh – that is his descendents – a different set of interests emerges from the narratives they transmit. The khalīfahs are the principal communicators of Haider Shaikh's history.200 Many khalīfahs live near his shrine and some take an active role in its daily upkeep. Many khalīfahs are active transmitters of the lore of the saint. They not only tell the commonly known tale of Haider Shaikh’s encounter with Bahlol Lodhi, but also of subsequent miracles and the importance of the saint and the dargah in their 199 In 1980 a body known as the Mandal Commission sponsored by the central government issued a report in which it was recommended that twenty-seven percent of all government positions and university admissions be reserved for backward and scheduled caste people. In 1990 the Prime Minister of India V.P. Singh announced that he would implement these reforms. The outcry led to his eventual resignation. In certain areas of India Brahman youths immolated themselves in protest. The VHP and BJP took this up as a particular cause. The prevailing anti- reservation attitude in the ascendant Hindu right movement helped to build the militancy in the movement to "liberate" Ayodhya as well. In general, Hindutva literature depicts Muslims as coddled by the government. In particular they object to the continued application of Muslim personal law while Hindus and Sikhs are subject to federal law in personal as well as civil and criminal matters.

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